


Wednesdays Require Coffee And Booze In Copious Quanitities

by arosynose



Series: every day getting closer to you [3]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: ALL WILL BECOME CLEAR, F/M, also tony popped up because PLOT DEVICE, derp derp, no hulk in the first chapter though, this one got long so it's multichaptered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:03:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arosynose/pseuds/arosynose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not fun being ignored. Darcy would know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Knitting is Harder Than It Looks, and Tony Stark Has Time To Kill

**Author's Note:**

> Wednesday's fic got long and multi-part-ed, so this'll be multichaptered. The Hulk's appearance isn't until chapter 2, but hey! You get lots of frustrated Darcy in the meantime! Feel her pain.

Darcy is starting to feel ignored. Not that she has any real right to, or anything, but. She figures if you give a guy cookies and they _carry you across the city in their giant and majorly ripped arms,_ there must be at least some kind of bond going on there. A friendly one, of course. Because if anything, they’re friends.

But if they’re friends, which Darcy has been kind of starting to think they are, because _hello, cookies and carrying,_ one would think Hulk wouldn’t be giving her the cold shoulder. Not that they’ve seen each other outside of two instances, and not that they have any sort of regular meeting pattern going on, but… _COOKIES, DAMN IT_. Giving a man baked goods means something, doesn’t it? She’s pretty sure she saw something about giving a guy banana bread on that show _Love Bites_ , but no wait that’d been romantic stuff and this was definitely not a romantic situation. Hulk is a giant green dude, who is her _friend_.

But then _where the fuck is he_. Seriously, worst friend ever. She has no idea how to find him, so for the first week after the cookie incident she just kind of stayed up watching TV, glancing over at the window near the fire escape to see if he’d pop up. After the second week, she’d given that up. Now it’s well into the fourth week an irritatingly sunny Wednesday morning, and Darcy’s stewing.

“Who does he think he is, anyway?” Darcy grouches, stalking over to Jane and slamming the printed test results down next to her. “The guy just waltzes onto my fire escape, then carries me across the city to pick you up—”

“You said you asked him to do that.”

“—and leaves without even saying goodbye!” Darcy hoists herself up onto the lab table to angrily swing her legs and glare at the floor. “Seriously, he just puts me down on the sidewalk and leaps off into the night without so much as a ‘thanks for the cookies, Bakery Goddess’ or even just a ‘had a great time, soft pretty Darcy’. The _nerve_!”

“You’re acting like a jilted lover,” Jane says evenly, and Darcy sputters.

“I am not!”

“You are, and I’m busy,” Jane says, bent over a mess of equation-covered papers and scribbling furiously. Every so often she glances up at her laptop screen, but never at Darcy. “Can’t you go listen to your iPod or rant about this on myspace or something?”

Darcy stares at her boss. “Wow. Wow. Okay, um, there are so many things wrong with what you just said, I’m not even going to go near it.” Her resolve lasts about half a second. “Really, Jane? _Myspace_?” She hops off the table. So much disconnect from reality is unsettling, even for Darcy, who has on more than one occasion been called the Queen of Crazyville. “Also, my iPod broke during that alien attack a month ago. Low blow, Jane. You know my beloved Alejandro is lost to me forever.”

Jane doesn’t reply. Darcy takes this to mean that Jane has entered Science Land, and will not be emerging until she gets the results she wants or until the lab catches on fire. Actually, Darcy amends, Jane would probably stay behind and try to salvage her work in the event of a fire. 

Speaking of fires, maybe if she starts one, Hulk will come swooping in to her rescue?

She stamps the idea out before it can take root. Crazy stalkery behavior is _not okay_. Life-threatening crazy stalkery behavior isn’t, anyway. And starting a fire is waaaayy over that line. Way over. And Jane would kill her, if Darcy didn’t kill herself in the process.

…Darcy decides she really needs a new hobby. And one that’s not baking, because if she bakes anything she’ll just wind up leaving it on the fire escape in the hopes that the smell will attract a Hulk. Which it doesn’t. She’s already tried that a few times, during the second week, and the only thing it’d attracted was wild animals. And not the kind that are big and green and have rippling biceps the size of her torso.

Yeah, Darcy really needs that new hobby.

Knitting seems as good as any recreational activity to take up. It’s supposed to be relaxing, right? Expecting a zen experience that will yield scarves and socks and sweaters, Darcy buys the needles and yarn required (which, _ouch_ her wallet does not take kindly to) and settles down with the internet to figure out this knitting thing.

Two hours later, she has what is more or less a pre-moth-eaten scrap of scarf. It is possibly the ugliest thing Darcy has ever seen. The stitches are all wonky, and she can fit several fingers at once through some of the holes.

“I should burn you,” Darcy says to it, half (okay, maybe a little more than half) expecting her hideous creation to come alive in a Frankenstein-esque manner. It doesn’t. She’s not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed—at least, if it had come alive, she would’ve had someone to talk to. Instead, she takes out the needles and starts picking her failed project apart. When she’s finished, the unraveled yarn lies in a sad heap on the coffee table. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere for her to find, if she feels like looking. She doesn’t.

Coffee. She needs coffee.

There’s a little coffee shop around the corner from her apartment. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall place, and Darcy appreciates the lack of both hipsters and harried businessmen. The place is quiet, mostly surviving off its regular customers, one of whom is Darcy. Technically Jane is also a regular customer, but since Darcy is the one who buys her coffee, she’s never actually set foot in the place. Darcy kind of likes that. Jane is crazyawesome, and Darcy loves sharing an apartment and workspace with her best friend, but it’s nice to have a place of her own.

Which is why it feels like she’s stepped onto an alien planet when she sees Mr. Stark ordering an espresso at the beat-up wooden counter. She’s almost sure she’s hallucinating at first, but then he turns around, gives her the up-and-down, and smirks.

“Take a picture,” he says. “It’ll last longer.”

Yep, that’s definitely Tony Stark, billionaire playboy extraordinaire. Darcy has always wanted to hear his sass in person. Now, however, she has something else on the brain.

Because, see, Tony Stark is Iron Man, and Iron Man is an Avenger, and you know who else is an Avenger? A certain green-skinned giant who’s been avoiding Darcy for three weeks.

She opens her mouth to say something, to ask where Hulk is, to ask if he’s said anything about her, _anything_ —and then realizes that showing interest in a guy generally perceived as a ruthless smashing machine is probably not good for establishing her sanity, tenuous though it may be. She closes her mouth again.

“Ah, speechless. Don’t worry, I tend to have that effect on people.”

Darcy snorts. “No worries here. I am completely worry-free.” She steps up to the counter and orders her usual, then settles back to wait.

“That’s a lie.”

“What?” It takes her brain a second to catch up, and then it starts whirring a mile a minute. What does he know? _How_ does he know? 

“You live in the Big Apple. No one here is ever stress free.” He gets handed his coffee, and leans back against the counter. “So tell me what’s eating you. I’ve got a few minutes to kill.”

Darcy’s right eyebrow creeps upwards.

“No, seriously. I’m all ears.” He takes a noisy sip of his coffee.

Darcy takes a deep breath. This needs to all come out at once—if she stops, she’ll freeze up. “Okay, so there’s this guy, and we’ve met up a couple times now, and he may have sort of saved my life once or twice, and then I fed him cookies, and he gave me a ride around the city. And now it’s been three weeks and he hasn’t gotten in touch.”

“Tried calling him?”

Darcy huffs, previous frustrations resurfacing. “Can’t. He doesn’t…um, have a phone. I don’t know where he lives, either.”

“What about his license plate number? You could track him through that.”

“Don’t remember it.” She rubs her left eye, feeling a weight settle over her shoulders.

“Well, what’s his name?”

Darcy blinks, too blanked out to notice the coffee being pushed her way by the barista. “Uh,” she says slowly. “Hank?”

Tony Stark looks vastly unimpressed. “You sure about that?”

Darcy nods. “Yep. Pretty sure. Hank Green.”

The corner of Tony Stark’s mouth twitches. “Honestly, kid, sounds to me like this guy was just some poser. Looking for a quick date. You know how boys are.”

The genius billionaire is so far off the mark it’s kind of hilarious. After some thought—hey, she’s been bored, okay?—Darcy is reasonably sure Hulk doesn’t want to get into _anyone’s_ pants. And the thought of Hulk being a poser in any sense of the word is just, well. Ridiculous would be putting it mildly.

“He’s definitely not a ‘boy’,” Darcy snorts, holding back the laugh that’s bouncing around in her throat. “Trust me, this guy is…he’s massive, and older than me by at least a few years. And I don’t think he’s capable of being a poser. Yeah, no, definitely not.” She shakes her head, grinning.

When she looks back at Tony Stark, he’s giving her an assessing look. Like she’s a robot to deconstruct and understand through mechanics. “Maybe,” he says, as Darcy takes a sip of macchiato, “he’s got other stuff on his plate.”

“Maybe,” Darcy says. Tony Stark’s watch beeps, and he hisses in through his teeth.

“My Pepper’s here, and she’s cranky,” he says, tossing her a loose smile and a quick handshake. “Good luck with that boy of yours.”

Darcy rolls her eyes at his retreating back, then finds a seat off to the side of the shop to mull over what her life has become.


	2. Hulks Are Green For Many Reasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamma radiation isn't the only thing that lends Hulks their unique skin tone. Darcy would know.

Three hours later, Darcy forcefully collects Jane from the lab and drags her back to the apartment, picking up food for dinner on the way. Dinner with Jane consists primarily of take-out, and secondarily of booze, if they feel like it. Which Darcy most decidedly does. Two beers in, she throws caution to the wind and gets smashingly drunk. Jane just gives her that Look, the one that means _you-are-ridiculous-and-I-don’t-know-why-I-put-up-with-you._ Darcy’s been seeing that one a lot lately, and as usual she sticks out her tongue in response. Which only makes Jane give a ladylike, put-upon sigh. Darcy makes another face, and the cycle continues until they’re both done eating (and drinking, in Darcy’s case) and head back to their respective rooms after stowing the leftovers.

Darcy collapses on her bed and is half-asleep when a loud banging on her window jars her brain. She rolls over, trying to get away from the noise, and succeeds only in falling off the bed. She manages to bang her head as well, and fuck if that isn’t a lovely headache she’s got going.

It vanishes abruptly when she sees what the source of the noise is. Hulk is there, somehow, hanging onto some ledge or something on the face of the apartment building. And Jesus, he’s _there_!

Oh, and he looks slightly furious. But first things first.

Darcy unlatches the window and slides it up with clumsy fingers—why had she thought getting drunk would be a good idea, again?—so she can poke her head out into the night air. She can feel Hulk’s breath against the top of her head as she peers up at him.

“ **Darcy touch Metal Man,** ” he says, before she can even say hello. His expression is dark, and not just because it’s nighttime. Darcy wants to duck inside and turn on her light so she can see him better, but she has a feeling it’d ruin the moment.

It takes her a while to realize he’s looking for some kind of response. Hey, it’s been a while, she’s Hulk-speak rusty, okay? “Uh, yeah? You mean Tony Stark, Iron Man, right? Yeah, we met at a coffee joint and shook hands.”

Judging by the rumbling sound coming from Hulk, he’s not too pleased with this information.

“But that’s all we did! I swear!” Darcy throws up her hands. “We just talked!”

“ **Talk about what?** ”

“Uh,” Darcy says, feeling her stomach drop. The flip-flopping feeling is back again. “You, actually,” she says, and instantly regrets it.

Hulk blinks slowly, processing then bares his teeth and raises a clenched fist. “ **Darcy and Metal Man talk about Hulk! _Laugh_ about Hulk!** ”

Darcy’s heart gives a disturbing wrench. She reaches out and through some miracle of balance, keeps upright while gripping Hulk’s fist with her tiny hands. “No, no! Nothing like that.” Her stomach feels like it’s going to jump up through her throat. “I was just worried. I hadn’t seen you in three weeks, and I didn’t know how to contact you or anything.” She clenches her hands tighter around his and blinks back the fuzziness in her vision. “I thought you were mad at me,” she says, voice small. She lets his hand go, then, and focuses on his belly button rather than look at his stormy expression. They sit in silence for a while, the only sounds being the regular New York City ambiance.

“ **Hulk not mad at Darcy,** ” Hulk says eventually. She still doesn’t feel up to looking him in the eye, but Hulk’s free hand comes up to nudge at Darcy’s chin until she raises her head. His eyes are hazel, with brilliant bits of green flickering through them. It’s like looking into a splintered emerald.

“Then why didn’t you come see me, you jerk,” Darcy mutters, old resentment layering itself back on to her. “You had me losing my mind.”

“ **Banner** ,” Hulk huffs. “ **Banner keep Hulk locked up.** ”

…Okay, whoever this Banner guy is, he’s going to get a great taste of Darcy’s fist if they ever meet.

“Why?” Darcy whispers. She feels like the moment might be lost if she speaks any louder. Their silence is so fragile. Hulk could bolt at any time.

“ **Protection,** ” Hulk says. “ **Hulk smash.** ”

“But not always,” Darcy insists. She still remembers how gentle his hands were on her when he set her down during their first and second encounters. This Banner guy sounds like a self-important jerk, and Hulk’s only said around six words about him. Darcy tells herself that as Hulk’s friend, she’s allowed to be indignant on his behalf.

“ **Hulk always angry,** ” he says, and he sounds almost sheepish. “ **Hulk not good with control.** ”

“You’re doing fine right now,” Darcy says, and smiles. After a beat, Hulk smiles back. 

“ **Darcy different,** ” he says, still grinning. “ **Darcy make Hulk happy.** ”

For a second there, Darcy forgets to breathe. She drags in a long, stuttering breath when she remembers again, and her heart beats frantically in her chest. “I’m glad,” she breathes, and Hulk’s smile widens. She should probably find that at least a little bit terrifying. Instead she just wants to—

Wants to.

Hulk’s grin vanishes in an instant, and his head whips around to stare at something far in the distance. “ **Suit men coming,** ” he grunts, rapidly sounding annoyed. “ **Banner coming soon. Hulk leave Darcy now.** ”

“Wait!” Darcy yelps, before Hulk can swing away into the black of night. “Come here?”

Hulk blinks and tilts his head to the side, but leans in closer.

Looking back the next morning, Darcy will blame it all on the remaining alcohol in her system. There is a 99.9999% chance that this is _not_ the case. But, whatever the reasoning behind her actions, there is no erasing the facts.

And the facts are that on Wednesday night, before Hulk leaves her again, Darcy leans in until her face is just inches from his. 

And then Darcy kisses the corner of Hulk’s mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...basically am not sleeping tonight. But I'm stopping after this, I swear it! I am going to get that hour and a half of sleep, so help me Thor!


End file.
